Dead in Vinland gets a demo on Steam

You can now try the turn-based survival game about magic Vikings before you buy.

Dead in Vinland is, as Jody described it in his recent review, "a turn-based survival game about a Viking family on a magic island that is also inhabited by god-like blue people, a tribe led by a skull-collecting warlord named Bjorn, and wanderers from other lands, including Africa and Japan."

You can probably go a long way toward deciding if you want to play it based on that alone, but if you're still not sure, a demo is now available on Steam. The demo covers the first seven days of life in Dead in Vinland, giving players the opportunity to meet Eirik and his family, explore the island setting, get a taste of the management and crafting systems, and of course do a little fighting.

To get it, find the "Download Demo" button in the sidebar of the Steam page (just below where it tells you which of your Steam friends already own the game) and click it. You'll need about 2GB of space to install it. The demo isn't currently available from GOG, but developer CCCP said that it's on the way. And if you spring for the full game after playing the demo, any progress you've made will carry over.

A 1.05 hotfix for Dead in Vinland was released last week, addressing a number of specific technical issues, including a serious one that prevented most of Eustache's dialogs from triggering. A more expansive 1.1 update, which sounds like it will at least partially address some of Jody's complaints about the game's inherent randomness, is still in the works.